Shameless organization. High Rate of Whistleblower Career Assasination
The General Medical Council have this to offer doctorkind. Even at 5am this morning, I can chuckle to myself and laugh at the scenario on child protection and Whistleblowing. Essentially, in Child Protection, the current law according to the GMC is that if you raise concerns and you are remotely wrong, the doctor can be hauled up in front of the GMC. In addition, if you rely on your chaperone, the Southall case law stipulates that the GMC won't believe them. So, yes, they won't believe your independent witness. They will though believe the lying scheming mother with a long history of dishonesty. I kid you not on this. This is taken directly from GMC v Southall.
They then run this Good Medical Practise Scenario
Dr Kwesi finds that the sterile packs he uses for surgery do not always contain the correct equipment. Colleagues suggest that this could be because the hospital is trying to save money by asking junior staff to fill them. Who should Dr Kwesi speak to? What should he do when the problem continues even after he has raised concerns?
"In a number of high profile cases, failure to report concerns early had serious consequences for patient care. GMC guidance says that doctors will be able to justify reporting a concern—even if it is groundless—if they do so honestly and go through the appropriate channels. In this situation Dr Kwesi reports the errors as an adverse event and tries to resolve the situation locally. When the situation doesn’t improve he speaks to the medical director at the hospital.
Good Medical Practice states that doctors must contribute to adverse event reporting to reduce the risk to patients. Dr Kwesi is doing the right thing in raising the matter. In this scenario the people Dr Kwesi would normally go to are part of the problem. The site draws on GMC advice to suggest that Dr Kwesi is left with no choice but to go outside the organisation and refer his concerns to the Care Quality Commission".
Nice to know the GMC are using that token foreign name to show how good they feel about foreign doctors. The fact that large numbers of foreign doctors are facing the GMC at this point in time is not a talking point for the GMC. Nevertheless, the above scenario is all well and good until
1. The Trust turns around and refers the doctor to the General Medical Council. The GMC will likely take the complaint up and will not listen to the doctors screams of raising patient concerns. They will then justify their action by using the " patient safety" excuse.
2. The General Medical Council regularly investigates and harasses Whistleblowers. Afterall, we know of the 2 year discreet inquiry conducted against me. Their justification in court was that my letter writing "tone" was not as they would like it. Actually, their tone in medical regulation and their catastrophic failures is not something I like either.
Essentially, Raj Mattu, Peter Wilmshurst, Dr S Vaidya, Robert Phipps and myself have all been investigated by the General Medical Council for doing exactly what the GMC suggests in its Good Medical Practise. If in doubt, the GMC rolls out Rule 57. Rule 57 is a nebulous Rule which applies to anything and everything.
"You must make sure that your conduct at all times justifies your patients’ trust in you and the public’s trust in the profession".And if you examine Rule 52, for a crackpot organisation like the General Medical Council - any conduct can be considered misconduct if the GMC says so. There is no definition of conduct capable of being "misconduct". So, if you raise concerns in good faith, the GMC would reverse an investigation on you making a barrage of allegations. Indeed, Vaidya and Robert Phipps were sanctioned. Their whistleblowing concerns were not considered appropriately by any authority.
As for Ward 87, the General Medical Council refused point blank to investigate the two reports showing the failures in care. The senior doctors responsible for creating the poor standards of care on the Ward remain working without a stain on their character. They were never held accountable for failing to raise the concerns on Ward 87. I was though character assasinated for raising justified concerns about patient safety. Of course, no one has anything to say about this aspect. It was a spectacular fiasco and the GMC know it was. Their interest is not in the patient safety of Ward 87 but hounding me as the Whistleblower. Their two year discreet inquiry without a formal complaint is the disturbing issue here. The GMC does not require a complaint to commence an investigation. I believe many doctors forget that.
And that is how Whistleblowing works in practice. The above shows the GMC does not practise what it preaches and guess what I am not convinced by its use of the token foreign name because their race relations record is dire. If you are a not British, just forget about whistleblowing because the GMC will wash you down with some Cianti. An interesting case on whistleblowing is Eswaran v GMC. This Court of Appeal judicial review analyses the fact that the GMC failed to investigate the justified concerns of Dr Eswaran. His concerns on clinical safety were thrown out at the first stage. The Assistant Registrar in this case was Anna Neil - the lady who also threw out concerns on the MMC in R v GMC Ex Parte Remedy UK.
My theory is that the GMC acts as a primary filter to discourage whistleblowers. It is often very happy to act as an instrument of harassment against them. Their Whistleblowing Protocol can be downloaded here. As Dr Bright states, the GMC fails to recognise medical mobbing and victimisation of the Whistleblower. To them, Trusts are always right and junior doctors are always wrong. The fact remains that what is touted in public is not what happens in practise. Medical culture and the GMC have not changed at all. They are simply better at cosmetically presenting a good show when it comes to the media. There is no recognition for the fact that the GMC itself is an instrument of harassment used against whistleblowers. Leading medical journals fail to address this dimension. Then the BMJ have Brian Keighley on their Committee. Brian is of course a GMC Committee Member and also the screener for Vaidya's complaints. He screened out a number of complaints against senior doctors at Lincolnshire NHS Trust :).
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